The Park at Lincoln Heights kitchen-and-bath renovation reinvigorates

“It just needed to be refreshed,” she said.

So the couple hired Mary Collis, who runs her own interior decorating firm in San Antonio. While she worked on much of the house, selecting fresh paint, new fixtures and furnishings, and several art pieces, the majority of her efforts went into updating the home’s kitchen and downstairs bathrooms. 

And she did it with style.

“Marisa said she wanted the kitchen to be a little bit luxe, a little bit of glam,” Collis said. “So that’s what we went with.” 

The work, which began in April 2021 and was recently completed, was done in three phases: In the first, the kitchen underwent a complete renovation, with gentler work done in the living and dining rooms; in the second, the ground floor powder room was redone; and the final phase took on the owner’s suite bedroom and bath. 

In the kitchen, Collis painted the cabinets a striking green that’s so dark it’s almost black, setting them off with blingy, faceted gold pulls.

“I call the hardware the jewelry of the cabinets,” Collis said. “I don’t want it to be overlooked.”

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The cabinets also received posh touches, such as custom, acid-washed mirrored fronts brought in from New York on some, and glass fronts with down lighting to show off Andersen’s glassware collection on others.

“I have had these glasses, first from my grandmother and then my mother, for 20 years, at least,” Andersen said. “They make me feel like they’re both still here in my home, and they also bring back memories of lively conversation, jokes and heated politics, when everyone left friends. So I do the same.”

Just as eye-catching is the geometric white, gold and black tile backsplash made of several types of marble.

But Collis avoided going overboard with bling, retaining the kitchen’s wood doors topped with old-style transoms.

“It was really important that we have that accent because it brings in the natural wood look,” she said. “It was the same with the concrete scored floors. We said we like them, so why change them?”

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Also settling down things is the 3½-by-6-foot center island and counters topped in a sedate white quartz.

Andersen said the kitchen gets plenty of use, as she likes to cook, and she and her husband enjoy entertaining friends and their large family. 

Part two of the renovation involved redoing the powder room, located in the short hallway between the kitchen and the owner’s suite. Collis and Andersen decided to go a little wild and wallpaper it with a textured design of large, wavy concentric circles. 

“We wanted to go with something that would flow into what we had just done in the kitchen,” Collis said. 

To that end, she explained, the deep black tones in the wallpaper, the light fixture that resembles an earring, the reflective surfaces and the Carrara marble stand-alone vanity all bring an elegant, luxe feel into the bathroom. 

The skylight in the powder room presented a design challenge, however, according to Collis. She had two choices: Wallpaper all the way up to the skylight, which would have required a lot more of the expensive wallpaper, or cut off the wallpaper and paint the rest.

“And if you do cut it off, where do you stop?” she explained.

She solved that problem by continuing the wood trim already at the top of the door all around the circumference of the room and then running the wallpaper only that high.

Bedrooms are meant to be a refuge, a place to prepare for the day and to unwind at night. Collis made the Andersens’ suite down the hall a relaxing sanctuary by painting it a warm gray and carrying that color into all the new fixtures and furnishings, including window treatments and a new headboard. She also sanded the wood floors and stained them a lighter, more soothing and contemporary color.

These decisions also were guided by the Patagonian quartzite she found at an Austin dealer and used in the bathroom. The natural stone that, oddly, comes from Brazil, displays bold, dramatic shapes in a kaleidoscope of whites, blacks, golds and beiges shot through with translucent gray.

“We wanted to do something fabulous in the bath, and when we saw this stone, everybody was on a unanimous agreement that that was the one,” she said.

She used the stone in a pair of separate bathroom vanities, with aprons and wall-mounted faucets for a clean, updated look, as well as in a huge slab made up of two pieces butterflied open like a Rorschach test and mounted on the wall behind the soaking tub. The result looks like a work of art, but one that is so heavy it had to be anchored into the ceiling as well as to the wall. 

The slab is bracketed by a pair of elegant Murano sconces imported from Italy.

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“We had another pair picked out, but because of the economy, the plant shut down,” Collis said. “So the person I get my Murano from said she felt so bad that she’d sell me this other pair that is a little more expensive for the original price. We were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we love this pair even more than the original.’ ”

In addition, they replaced the tile on the floor and in the shower, and reset the resin tub so it sits in the middle of the two vanities, which required chiseling out the floor to move the drainage pipes but made the room seem larger and much more comfortable.

With the renovation complete, Andersen said, she’s again fallen in love with her home.

“Back when the home was tired, I noticed that I wasn’t cooking quite as much or wanting to spend as much time here,” she said. “We used to have to travel to be someplace that looked fresh and nice. But now that it’s finished, I’m just enjoying the home so much more. It’s been reinvigorating to be excited about being in the kitchen and having people come over and sharing it with them.” 

Editor’s Note: Due to incorrect information supplied to the Express-News, an earlier version of this article misidentified the municipality where the Park at Lincoln Heights is located. It is in the city of San Antonio.

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